Knots and Bolts Archive
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New Spile Increases Sap Flow
The big buzz this spring in maple sugarmaking circles involves the new check-valve spouts that many sugarmakers with vacuum systems are trying for the first time. The spiles were invented by Tim Perkins at the University of Vermont’s Proctor Maple Research Center. According to Perkins, in the spring of 2009, the spouts produced a seasonal total of 44.6 gallons of… (more)
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Creating a Vernal Pool
Stewardship Stories - Readers Share Their Ideas and Projects In the fall of 2007, with support from the U.S.D.A.’s Wildlife Habitat Improvement Project (WHIP), we installed seven vernal pools of varying sizes on our 410-acre property in North Bennington, Vermont. Our goal was to enhance our property for all sorts of wildlife, including amphibians. The construction was done with an… (more)
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Growing Willow for Fuel
As communities in the Northeast look for green fuels to replace coal and oil, they are exploring options in woody biomass, including plantings of shrub willow. Our forests will certainly play a key role in sustaining regional biomass plants, but what about on a smaller scale? Might it become feasible for landowners to grow their own short-rotation woody-biomass crops? Proponents… (more)
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Out By the Roots
Out by the Roots They’ve been compared to oversize antlers, bones, or fantastic teeth. If you’ve ever seen the remains of a stump fence, you probably have your own description. The stump fence is an unlikely mix of bulky form and delicate, almost lacy design – whorls and striations that once hid underground now put on display for all the… (more)
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When Ice Melts, Lakes Spring Back to Life
When Ice Melts, Lakes Spring Back to Life The onset of spring brings many changes to our part of the world. The longer days and higher temperatures entice plants to emerge and trees to bud. On our lakes, the ice begins to melt. We anticipate the water activities we’ll soon be enjoying: swimming, boating, and fishing. But the spring thaw… (more)
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Safe Passage
Crossing a four-lane highway that sees 50,000 vehicles a day can be a daunting task for an animal. So a group of organizations and individuals in Concord, Massachusetts, teamed up with MassHighway to install wildlife-friendly box culverts under a suburban stretch of Route 2. Since the project’s completion in 2005, the Wildlife Passages Task Force, an eight-person volunteer group of… (more)
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Four Centuries of Slow Growth
While conducting a study of old-growth trees at Huntington Forest in Long Lake, New York, research specialists Steve Signell and Colin Beire came across a fairly nondescript, fallen hemlock tree. The tree had blown over and blocked a path; it had subsequently been cut and pushed to one side. Though the tree was only 20 inches in diameter, the dense… (more)
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If Winter Comes, Can Springtails Be Far Behind?
Given an estimated around-the-globe average of 100,000 of them per cubic meter of soil, it seems astonishing that springtails (the tiny creatures often called “snowfleas”) are frequently overlooked. Spotty distribution isn’t to blame for their invisibility. They occur in woodland and in grassland, in deserts and on permanent Arctic snowfields, in caves and greenhouses, even on fresh and salt water.… (more)
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Wood Industry Woes Drag On
“It’s a weird time in the wood industry,” said Bob De Geus, wood utilization specialist with Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks and Recreation. He paused then, trying to synthesize hard data, speculation, and the fighting spirit of the men and women in the woods business into a sound bite he could give a journalist who was asking way too broad… (more)
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Wasps versus Borers
The adult emerald ash borer (EAB) is a beautiful, metallic-green beetle, too pretty, it would seem, to be so deadly. And yet, in its larval form, the EAB has killed millions of ash trees since its inadvertent introduction to Michigan in 2002. This notorious insect, in the family of wood-boring beetles called the Buprestidae, is now spreading east from Pennsylvania,… (more)